These interpretations draw on much the same evidence Mason does, and some explanations include estimated positions of rocks prior to their displacement by interactions between the Earth's drifting crustal plates. Researchers establishing these estimates examine fragments found in a variety of places and conditions, determine the strength and direction of the forces that moved them and create maps locating their probable origins.

Because the suture runs beneath the Brunswick Magnetic Anomaly -- an area where the earth's magnetic field is unusually weak -- researchers hope that other magnetic anomalies will also turn out to indicate crustal plate boundaries and other important geologic structures.

In Pakistan, Northern area is seismically highly active due to ongoing collision of two crustal plates whereas the whole country is situated on active seismic belt and large-scale magnitude earthquake have been come.

If you had been looking for a very long, geologic time, you could have seen the continents themselves in motion, drifting apart on their crustal plates, held afloat by the fire beneath.

Most faults either slide these crustal plates horizontally past each other (California's San Andreas Fault comes to mind) or into each other, such as where the Pacific Ocean's Nazca Plate dives under the continent of South America.

The small minerals' behavior created boundaries defining Earth's first crustal plates and set the stage for plate tectonics, according to a new computer simulation appearing in the April 24 Nature.

This releases something called strain energy that has built up as the lithosphere gets deformed by the crustal plates shifting around.

"Earthquakes occur when two crustal plates on earth slide past each other causing a fault or fracture in the rocks the result which is sudden trembling of the earth surface.

Callisto has faint leopard-spots which probably represent flattened scars of ancient impacts; Ganymede has grooved bands of bright ice that curve between the ancient crustal plates; Europa has globe-spanning ridges and bands that suggest a reorientation of the ice crust above its ocean; and Io has mountains and calderas, randomly scattered but mysteriously nestling against each other.

When crustal plates collide on land, the type of deformation of the lithosphere is generally divided into thin-skinned and thick-skinned, but within these broad categories, a wide range of phenomena can be observed.

It wasn't until the 1950s and 60s that we learned about plate tectonics, the great crustal plates which move across the Earth's surface, floating on a semi-molten layer below.

The Indian Ocean tsunami was caused by a magnitude 9.3 undersea earthquake in a deep-ocean trench off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where two of Earth's crustal plates collide.

Simpson explained that the Denali Fault is part of a system of cracks and folds produced by the collision of crustal plates with southern Alaska.